


I Crave, I Love, (I've Waited Long Enough)

by Meduseld



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: All their canon history, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Feelings, Jason hasn't dealt with dying, Love, M/M, Mild but just in case, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Suicidal Thoughts, The boys are just trying to figure it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:36:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Just because they’re soulmates doesn’t mean it’s easy.





	I Crave, I Love, (I've Waited Long Enough)

**Author's Note:**

> For the DC Bingo prompt “Soulmate AU”.

Jason breaks in through the back window, because he doesn’t want to go anywhere else and he’s not completely sure Roy would let him in through the front door, anyway.

It’s disturbingly easy, even for him, and he has half a mind to point it out but there’s no way to do that without sounding psychotic.

Not that he cares, usually. But it’s Roy.

That’s the heart of it.

Before Jason can decide whether to go find him or just pass out in his bed, Roy turns the corner, coffee mug in hand.

It’s not steaming.

He doesn’t drop it when he sees Jason, or do anything beyond nod calmly, like Jason called ahead or something. “You want a towel?” he says, after Jason just stands there.

In his defense, Roy’s ratty robe, the one that makes it look like he’s cosplaying The Dude, has these huge baggy sleeves and he can just see the tip of the soulmark on the inside of his elbow.

Jason’s soulmark, if you feel like getting technical. He usually doesn’t.

“You saying I need a shower? Because if we’re being catty, you need better fucking security. My grandpa could have busted in with his eyes closed” Jason says before he can think about it.

He means it in the general sense, because the closest thing he has to a grandfather is Alfred Pennyworth, who could probably break into the Tower of London without a sweat on an off day.

Roy doesn’t take the bait, still looking at Jason like he’s a wayward cat that keeps going missing before showing up pregnant. Again.

It a disturbingly accurate summary of their relationship, if not for the fact that between them it’s Roy who has the rugrat.

If he were a better man, he might wonder where she is.

“That’s on purpose, man. I got nothing worth stealing and all you fuckers use the window instead of the door like normal people. Wally, Dick, Kory. Hal when he’s planetside. Even your dad once” Roy says like he’s had this conversation before.

“Bruce isn’t my dad” Jason says, so wound up already that he’s easy to agitate.

Not that Roy ever had any trouble getting to Jason’s soft underbelly, which stills exists despite all his efforts.

“Sure –Roy says with an eye roll– just like Ollie’s not mine. Now get in the goddamn shower. I’ll bring you a towel” and Jason honestly has nothing to say to that.

And since he’s not going to sulk about it because he’s a grown up, thank you very much, what he does is leave a trail of dirty, gunpowder smelling, bloody clothes on his way to the flimsy plywood door.

The blood isn’t his at least, which he knows is the thing Roy would get stuck on. He used to, anyway.

Jason leans against the cool door while the water warms up, yawning. It’s possible that he hasn't been sleeping much lately. Or at all.

It's been a problem for as long as he can remember, even something of an asset when he was on the street, so it's not something he can blame on the Pit.

Even if it didn't fucking help any.

Roy is his usual remedy, at least for a while. For as long as he can stand to be around people.

It's a little funny; when they were younger, Roy didn't count as people. Probably Jason is the one that doesn't, now.

It's a recurrent thought, easy to push away when he steps into the spray.

The shower is probably the nicest thing about this place, a nondescript box in a nondescript neighborhood, surrounded by nondescript people who probably get real excited about tax law.

Compared to how they grew up, both on the surface and underneath, it's almost unspeakably exotic. He wonders if Roy takes the commuter train now.

It's nice though, being in Roy's shower, surrounded by Roy smells, reminded just how deep Roy is in his blood.

At least part of it is psychosomatic, he knows, but the presence of a soulmate has been known to help heal wounds and slow bleeding and all sorts of hospital type things that Jason's usually in need of.

It usually gets him half hard, too, the pressure of the water beating down on his bruises and the knowledge that Roy must jerk off in here. Sometimes he must think of Jason too.

The door opens just as he's finishing, the unholy combination of being raised without an abundance of running water and by Pennyworth-Wayne discipline making it impossible for him to ever shower longer than five minutes.

Roy knows that, of course.

They’ve shared more than one place over the years, even if most of those were for a day or two in buildings that were very literally falling apart.

He pauses for a moment before pulling open the curtain with a flourish. It’s covered in cute woodland animals and it seems newish so it was probably a gift from Wally. Maybe M’gann.

He doesn't want to think about what happened to the old one, how they knew it was moldy and ugly and in need of a replacement.

Jason was kind of fond of it, which isn't surprising. He liked what it said about Roy.

Jason's dramatic naked reveal doesn't have quite the effect he's expecting.

He isn't, in fact, instantly jumped by a slab of redheaded muscle.

Maybe he's losing his touch.

On the other hand, he doesn't get an arrow to the gut, either.

Roy stays where he's sitting on the bathroom counter, heels idly drumming against the cabinet doors, thighs incredibly distracting in his old boxers.

It’s a pair Jason’s pulled off of him before, he’s reasonably sure. Roy gets attached to things.

The only real change is in his eyes, gone flat and hungry, behind the light haze of cigarette smoke.

It’s eye catching enough that it takes a minute to register that he’s lost the robe.

He thought Roy had quit for good this time, which is what he almost says when Roy leans over and taps his ashes into the sink, which, gross.

He knows that's hypocritical, hardly cares.

But it's Roy's house and Jason doesn't live here. And as appealing as a fight would be, the idea of Roy slamming his body right into the wall and pressing in, bringing him to heel, Jason's not really into cigarette burns, accidental or not.

Roy knows that, as well as he knows the little cluster of ancient and round burn scars around the slope of his neck and shoulder. He doesn't have to say it.

“Your clothes are in the wash. The ones I could salvage, anyway” Roy mumbles around the end of the cig.

While Jason takes him time toweling himself down, wondering if it looks sexy or just awkward because it’s a fine, fine line, Roy takes an extra deep drag, stubs it out against the metal drain and dumps it in the tiny peach colored plastic garbage can by the toilet.

That, he knows for a fact, was a pointed gift from Dick.

The butt lands, he notes absently, on the more-holes-than-fabric socks Jason had been wearing. Now that he thinks of it, they might have been Roy’s once upon a time.

He’s not really sorry. People should have learned by now. They shouldn't give Jason anything they want back.

He fixes the towel around his waist as Roy leans back against the glass, stretching the overtaxed fabric of his ancient t-shirt, washed so many times it’s gone that indeterminate color between dirty white, grey and green.

It gets him moving, keeps his eyes from Roy’s relaxed arms.

There’s no mistaking a soulmark for tattoo ink, no matter how much he might want to. And there’s no mistaking the way the permanent maelstrom in his chest is soothed, just a little, from Roy being there, weighing him down with those heavy lidded eyes.

He doesn't ache, now. He never does under that gaze.

It makes it easy to put a slink in his step, to amble over to him in a way that would make Selina proud, towel calculatedly draped over his hips to tempt far more than skin ever could.

Another one of life’s little jokes. Like the black arrow, fletching fanning over his hip, that follows along his pelvis to point directly at his crotch.

Roy’s arrow, which is a comfort.

He knows it’s mostly bullshit, the idea that the placement of your soulmark is some deep Rorschach test of your true self, up there with astrology and tea leaf reading and phrenology. It’s only the shape, on the person you match, that really matters.

But that's hard to remember sometimes, after years of innuendo and running from the sort of men who wanted to see it up close and raised eyebrows from the sort of people who luncheon.

Even Bruce had frowned at it, when Jason was new if not shiny, the first time he saw it.

Though now that he’s older, he wonders if Bruce worried that it might mean Oliver, instead. The suggestive placement wouldn’t have helped any, might have even made it seem more likely that Jason would be bound to a lecherous creep.

There’s still some truth to it, after all, that the place your soulmark picks means _something_. It’s not for no reason that there’s a generation of reality stars and Youtubers and quote-unquote influencers with their marks on their faces.

The hilarious thing is, that for all the sex Jason has had, sweaty and inventive and probably excessive, the only person he's ever had it with is Roy.

There's no one else that knows that. Probably. There’s Bruce, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, even without considering that Jason knows a lot of telepaths.

And he yelled, nights, in Nanda Parbat. He got used to waking up hoarse.

Fuck knows what he said. Maybe it was just Bruce’s name on a loop, his not-so-last words. He doesn’t think so, though.

Ra’s would have used that. He used everything else.

Jason looks up suddenly, escaping memories that feel like sandpaper in his gut, realizing he’s probably just been standing there with resting murderface, eyes locked on that marked strip of skin on his soulmate’s arm.

Roy doesn’t looked freaked out about it. Or pitying.

He could probably deal far more easily with the first. He’s more used to it.

From this angle, trying to curse God and Ra’s and Bruce and the Joker in the same breath, all while pulling himself together, he can see the shadowed hollow beneath Roy’s jaw.

There was a time that there was always some sort of mark there, from Jason’s lips, his teeth, thumbs, tongue or bruising kisses.

It’s been a while. A long while.

The first time he’d seen Roy again, after the Joker and the Pit and all the madness that came with it, they hadn’t kissed.

He remembers the way Roy’s eyes had gone watery and his mouth dropped open, Jason’s heart stinging in his chest. He hadn’t called ahead of course.

He wouldn’t have even if he had known what to say.

There had been no sound, not until Roy’s hands had come up, to grab his shoulders or move in his hair or to just touch him and make sure he was real, not a shadow or a dream, and Jason had jumped back like a startled cat.

They hadn’t talked about it. Not then. Still haven’t.

He knows what they must think, Roy and his handful friends and his always expanding family, about what must have happened to Jason there, in the far stone reaches of the League’s castle, cold winds howling in the dark night, a living dead boy surrounded by soulless killers.

Like that didn’t describe life at the Manor.

But the truth is, no one ever touched him there. Ever. Unless you counted all the times they set to sparring and drawing blood.

But never anytime else. If he wasn’t violently sick or convulsive, like those first weeks, because coming back from death is never easy no matter what the Al Ghuls might tell you, he was nervy and impulsive, like a rabid terrier. Or a feral cat. Stephen King, now that was your man for the realities of resurrection.

Roy hadn’t asked him, then or ever, what it had been like. Jason hadn’t wanted him to.

He had just watched with those eyes that said that in some twisted way, he already knew.

The way he was doing now.

Of course the way Jason’s hands kept rising like they were finally going to grab a handful of his thighs or loosen the knot on his towel and then dropping without doing any of that might have something to do with that.

It’s not all that often he’s spoiled for choice. Or this naked, in the not-so-fun way.

“Hey” Roy says, nice and low, “maybe you should be getting in bed”.

“Finally, you’re making some sense” Jason says with a smile he knows does it for Roy, the one that says he’s just this side of feral.

Or at least it used to say that. Jason’s not a huge mirror guy, these days.

“Yeah, c’mon” Roy says with a sigh, his knees pressing Jason back so he can slide off the cheap laminate of the countertop.

Just that touch of skin on skin sends a zing through Jason, the kind that rends his ventricles and makes his ankles crumble. There was no point in having anyone else, in Jason’s estimation, if they couldn’t make you feel like that.

Or the move in his veins the way Jason's blood runs hot and cold, following the graceful stretch of Roy's back and backside as they move down the narrow hall.

It was probably a tactical mistake, letting Roy go first instead of giving him a similarly breathtaking sight.

Better, probably, as Jason is still very nearly naked. And he knows he’s pretty.

For all the doubts he's had over the years, his body has never been one of them.

But he can't find it in him to be upset over it. There haven't been many opportunities to openly ogle Roy in recent years, not when he isn't somersaulting through the air above him, Roy's arms taut and deadly and perfect as they aim and shoot.

Jason likes to think he's not alone in missing it.

Still, as much as he's enjoying the view, he makes sure to beat Roy to the bedroom door, swinging inside in a sweet little move that both gives Roy a tantalizing brush of skin and gets rid of the towel.

Egyptian cotton it is not, and Bruce ruined Jason for Walmart brand things ages ago. For a lot of things, actually.

But he got things in that trade too, and lately that's been easier to live with.

Jason drops onto the bed, messy and unmade as ever, Roy prone to twitching or even running like a greyhound in his sleep.

He doesn't quite strike a pinup pose, but he comes close. It's hard to keep the smile, wide and wicked, on his face, though.

Because Roy doesn't look tempted. He's locked in place in the doorway instead, face clouded as he looks into the room like it isn't familiar.

Jason lounges back, eyes hooded, feeling more alive than he has in months.

Since the last time he saw Roy, sneaking into Oliver's in the middle of the night, making out like teenagers with clumsy hands in his kitchen.

The time before that he didn't even see Roy, just slept in his bed before leaving a note on his way out of the door.

It would be nice to go a little further tonight.

"You joining me any time this century?" Jason drawls, hoping it'll be the thing to break the last of Roy's reserve. 

The answer he gets instead is "Go the fuck to sleep Jay, I'll be right back".

Roy says it soft, like maybe this is happening back in that warehouse in Bucharest, or maybe Budapest, the one where Jason refused to admit he had the flu. He can admit his barometer for happy memories is fucked, but Roy taking care of him really is a good one.

"Where the fuck are you going?" he says, stubborn in the blood.

"To turn off the lights and all that shit, man. I pay utilities" Roy says, his eyes adding _and because I can’t be in the room with you_.

Jason hates that he can still hear it, so close to him and feeling nowhere near him at all.

“What, we fuck with the lights off now? Will the homeowners' association come after you if we don’t ask Jesus for forgiveness after?” he adds, pulse thudding in his neck.

Roy can probably see it. Jason isn’t scared of a lot, and that was true even before his peek beyond the veil, but this makes his blood run cold. He can’t bring himself to even think the whole thought, everything that comes after _Roy might not want him anymore_.

His name had been the first thing he said, when he was finished clawing out of the Pit and dry heaving onto the ancient stone. He didn’t speak again for weeks.

Leaning against the doorframe, Roy looks as bad as he feels.

“Is that even what’s going to happen?” he says and Jason wants to call it a low blow but he can’t. 

After all it's been actual years since they've done something you could consider sex, even if you're not playing by Clinton rules.

Last time, when Roy had slid a hand between his thighs, Jason had bolted. Right out the window, truth be told.

“It’s fine, Roy” he tries, his mouth and throat dry. “It can be for you, I can be good for you-”

Roy makes a sound like Jason’s gutting him. The fact that Jason can verify that from personal experience is more proof that he shouldn't be here, in this room or in this life.

He knew that. It still stings.

Roy’s shaking his head, looking pale. “Look. I just...It’s not easy, okay?” he says at last, and Jason knows that he should leave, that he knows the answer.

He still asks.

“What isn’t?” because he’s never been able to keep his fingers out of a wound.

“Being in love with you” Roy says because he’s never been one to pull a punch.

They don’t say it. They never do. Because that’s the crux of this, isn’t it.

Soulmates should be in love, or have love. That’s what touching souls is.

And they did, before. But Jason _died_.

He broke the fundamental promise lying under what they had.

No one’s supposed to lose their soulmate.

But it happens, a thousand telenovelas bear that out. And the world keeps spinning. It has to.

Roy had a life, had a daughter, and Jason rose up from the grave to take them.

He could square that with himself, he knows how selfish he can be.

Everyone thinks Bruce taught him that, because the man hoards his grief like gold, but Jason was born hungry and grasping. He’s always been willing to steal his seat at the table.

He didn’t have to, before, or after, he thought, because Roy just gave it to him, molded differently despite coming from the same sort of grime as Jason.

He used to joke that they were the Town Poor and the Country Poor. Roy used to laugh.

“I’m sorry” Roy says. “That was unfair” even though it’s not. “I just. I want you to be happy, Jay, I want you to be okay. Tell me what you want, tell me what I can do”.

It makes Jason want to scream. That’s not the problem, not the one that keeps Jason up at night, staring at the blue screen of a dead TV, or an empty street, or a circling fan.

It’s this.

He wishes he were someone better, someone good, someone that deserved him. Jason wants to say the same thing to him, to mean it, to make it happen.

But Jason didn’t come back right. He knows that, and he knows that everyone’s afraid of it.

They don’t know what fear really is. None of them have had the taste of the Pit in the back of their throats, mingling with formaldehyde and graveyard dirt.

He thought that was the last thing he had to fear, until right now. But in the end it’s the same terror.

Jason doesn’t know if he has a soul, anymore. And he can’t even begin to fathom just how fucked that is.

He can gauge just how unfair. That he has a soulmate and they’re both screwed because there’s no one else, not even each other anymore, their fundamental bond severed even when Jason’s standing right there.

He wants to go to his knees and beg for Roy’s forgiveness, for his understanding, for taking what he doesn’t deserve anymore.

Jason just wants to tell him the truth that haunts him: he never meant for any of this at all and he wants to take it back, the casket and the darkness and their kisses, not because he regrets it, not because he’s ashamed but because it all lead to this, his lover destroyed.

He wants to say he’s sorry, so fucking sorry. But that word was beaten out of him a long time ago.

There’s nothing but the silence and Roy’s breathing, carefully controlled like he’s lining up a shot. Maybe that’s what he should ask for.

But he can’t do that, not to Roy. And it’s not really what he wants.

He can only think of one thing, missing like a limb since he’s come back.

"Just, just...call me Jaybird?" he manages. “You used to”, he adds, his voice cracking under the weight of it.

Maybe it’s that what finally makes Roy move, wrap his arms around Jason, his embrace warm and tight and as demanding as he wants it to be, needs it to be, pulling him out of the past and into the here and now, the ratty sheets and the man he loves.

Jason sobs into his chest, feeling like rivers are pouring out of him, remembering the flood.

Roy never loosens his grip, never says anything but "Jaybird, baby, I'm here".

It doesn’t feel like weakness, not when Roy is wrapped around him, a shield between him and the world and the wolf at the door.

He must have known when he said it, he must remember that loving Jason means being prepared to bleed.

When it stops, he doesn't feel anything.

Not even clean, even after the shower, with his face all snotty. But he doubts anything in the bed set has been washed recently, and Roy's shirt passed beyond saving years ago.

It's still good enough to hold them, Roy's warm weight starting to lull him to sleep.

"Mhmmph" he says when he feels Roy start to stir.

"It’ll only take a minute" Roy says, running a strong hand along the back of Jason's head.

He hasn't stopped shooting, it seems, going by his calluses. It’s its own comfort.

"Fine, you fucking plebe" Jason says, not even close to sounding like he means it. Roy huffs, kisses his hair.

“One night won’t break me” he says, settling back around Jason and bracketing him with his thighs.

He could make a joke about that. He could make several. Some of them might even be funny.

What he says instead is, "You know I love you, too, right?” As much as he can.

Roy makes a sound, almost subsonic, caught between his lips and throat.

But Jason can't miss it, pressed this close. His arms snake around Jason, helplessly, his nose burying into Jason's hair.

The noise is more like a whine, now.

He swallows, muscles working and making Jason shiver.

"Yeah, Jaybird, I do" he manages at last, spoken into the soft skin at the base of his neck.

And there's not much more a kid like Jason could ever hope for. It's its own sort of miracle.

He reaches, brings up Roy's hands, kisses his rough fingertips, folds them over his heart and, lulled by Roy's breathing, finally goes the fuck to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic’s title is a line from [Kasey Chambers’ _Not Pretty Enough_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdflARH06dY), because it’s A) a *very* Jason song, and B) he was supposed to ask that (sarcastically, with an undertone of genuine worry) in the bedroom scene but [it clearly didn’t work out that way](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArtifactTitle). There’s also a few references to [Joni Mitchell’s _A Case Of You_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o) which is pretty much Roy’s side of the story. If you want to read this fic in a single (canon!) panel, [just check out the first image here](https://applepieeeee.tumblr.com/post/145844159906/whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyytears-i). And the others to see why I wanted to write this. And finally, if you want to know what Jason’s soulmark on Roy’s arm is, well...so would I.


End file.
